A wild and crazy Senate

Having slain the credit card companies and protected widows from foreclosure, Sen. Chris Dodd is out on the floor these days shielding teenagers from the clutches of Big Tobacco. And this from a Connecticut Democrat who was being demonized just weeks ago for allegedly helping Wall Street fat cats collect rich bonuses — at the taxpayers’ expense.

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Down one floor in the Capitol, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) is defying the White House with his own bipartisan outreach program: adding a half-billion-dollar public works project to a war-funding bill at the request of the panel’s ranking Republican, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran.

No matter that President Barack Obama specifically asked Democrats to keep the bill clean or that his fellow Hawaiian has been a loyal trouper on everything else the president wants. Appropriations is Inouye’s committee now; this is his decision, and the Mississippi Republican his partner.

“I think those who discussed this matter with me must have concluded I was serious,” Inouye told POLITICO. And then he smiled.

It was Obama himself, during his short Senate stint, who famously likened the intrigue of the place to the Peloponnesian Wars of Ancient Greece. If so, Dodd and Inouye — two allies who have served a combined 75 years in the chamber — would qualify as three stars in the Athenian or Spartan officer corps.

Each is decidedly old school and vulnerable to the changes in Washington. Each is also a reminder of how the Senate is a place ultimately shaped by human beings with all the frailties, quirkiness and resourcefulness that that implies. And each is a legislator heavily invested in exactly those human loyalties — which can be good and bad for Obama’s message of change.

Dodd, 65 and seeking a sixth term, has paid a heavy price back home in Connecticut for his insider image and years on the Senate Banking Committee. As chairman, he played a lead role last February in trying to cap executive compensation for firms assisted by the Treasury. But amid the final bargaining, Dodd made concessions that came back to bite him, however unfairly, when the bailed-out insurance giant American International Group paid out millions of dollars in bonuses.

Since then, Dodd has begun to climb back by aggressively identifying himself with a host of pro-consumer issues. Many, such as the recently enacted credit card reform bill, were on his agenda from Election Night last year — well before the AIG fracas. But without doubt, he has also beat the drum louder and found a new path to redemption through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where his sidekick, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has trusted him to take the reins while the chairman battles cancer from his home in Massachusetts.

Thus, it is Dodd who is now thrown into the favorable light by handling legislation on the Senate floor this week that would authorize the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products and severely restrict cigarette advertising targeted at teenagers. As Kennedy’s stand-in, he shuttled back and forth to the White House on Tuesday. He spent Wednesday closeted off the Senate floor reviewing health care legislation crafted by Kennedy’s staff and then as Banking chairman was slated to go to dinner at the Treasury on Wednesday night to discuss financial regulation.